May 3, 2012

Meh.

Today has been one of those days. Not bad, precisely, just, well, meh. It started when I woke up at the unpleasantly early hour of 8:30. I know, I know--8:30 is NOT early. Well, maybe it isn't when you go to bed at 10 or 11 pm like a normal person. But when you go to bed around 2 or 3 am every night, 8:30 comes pretty early. As if that weren't bad enough, the ankle that I'd rolled for the first time in months was a little swollen and distinctly unhappy when I awoke. Still, I decided to take advantage of the early (for me) hour by showering and going to Panera's for my favorite breakfast sandwich since I'm usually getting up too late to shower and drive over in time to get there before breakfast ends. It was glorious...I get a Power Sandwich with an egg, ham, and lovely white cheddar, but I switch the healthy whole grain bread for ciabatta so I can enjoy that lovely crunch. There's little more relaxing than sitting in an empty booth at Panera's and munching away on that little slice of heaven while reading one of my books.

Replace the bacon with ham for a yummy, yummy meal.

Since I was up and about earlier than usual, I decided to go and finally get my car washed since it's been a while because my preferred car wash closed and I foolishly kept waiting. There was always "one more road trip," and who wants to wash a car only to get it encrusted with bug guts again days later? Plus, since I have a van, getting to the top is a hassle. Friends don't trust me on ladders or, you know, the floor anymore, and the hubs has never been particularly good about keeping up with washing the vehicles. So off I went to a local car wash. I probably need to get the van detailed, but I figured I'd wait and see how they did with everything else first.

I drove in, ordered the "special," which is a full wash, vacuum inside, window wash inside and out and, theoretically, a wax, though I'm not convinced I got that. I walked inside the office/waiting room and strolled through the displays of air fresheners and car accessories to get to the cash register, where a young lady of vaguely surly mien took my money. I found it difficult to breath inside because of an overwhelming miasma of what could loosely be termed "fragrance." Not even the multiple air fresheners could produce a pong that strong. I never could find the source, thought there were candles and other odiferous items deployed throughout the shop, so it could have been anything, or perhaps even everything. My sinus started rebelling. I tried sitting at the end of the shop by the outside porch which overlooked the cars being wiped down and vacuumed, where I promptly knocked over one of those plastic fishbowls of business cards. It didn't help. I began to get a headache and so went outside to sit at one of the tables. My book hadn't been open more than 3 minutes when a woman came out, sat down, and lit up a ciggie directly upwind of me. Great. First cloying perfumes, now smoke inhalation. I moved to a bench on the other side of the porch that was mostly out of fumes' way, though it was directly in the sun. I sat and sweated and read for a while till the lady left, then again changed seats to one in the shade.

Eventually my car was finished and I was called to "examine" it to make sure I was pleased with the results. I noticed a few little spots, which the guys then rushed to rub off, stopping in front and asking if one spot was scratches or bug guts. "Oh, no, ma'am, that's scratches...sometimes the bugs gets imbedded in the scratches and won't come off 'cuz of the clearcoat..." Uh-huh. Sure, dude, whatever you say. That's the same sort of logic that encourages conservatives to defund Planned Parenthood and make contraception more difficult to get on the basis of it "reducing the frequency of abortions" or which suggests that teaching to tests instead of teaching critical analytical skills and not holding students accountable for their own responsibility to their learning will somehow magically improve education in this country. Because yeah, that's it. And because I was raised in the era of accountability and critical analysis, I see certain flaws in your argument, such as 1. how can bugs get imbedded in scratches less than a millimeter deep and 2. why in the hell would you be clearcoating a car that isn't all the way clean in the first place?? But whatever, dude.

Rather than waste my time arguing about something that wasn't going to change, I got in the car and drove off, but not before noticing smears which somehow got missed all over the inside of my windshield. Sigh. To be honest, I didn't check the windows very well since I was focused on the car body, except to look and see if the sticker gunk was still on my back window. Yesterday I admitted to myself that since the girlie is almost a junior now in college and will be gone virtually all summer, it was finally time to accept that I'm no longer a Soccer Mom and remove some of the Soccer Mom flair from the back window of my van. It was a sad moment, but I still giggled thinking about how everyone must have thought I had two kids since one sticker was for dance and used the girlie's first name, whereas the other sticker was for her playing flute at All-State, but had her middle name, which is what she used in high school. I love my girlie and her multiple personalities! Anyway, though I'd scraped them off, I didn't scrub off the goo that was left behind because I was curious to see how the car wash people would deal with it. Which they didn't. When I came out to inspect the van, the gunk was still proudly there, mocking me from the otherwise clean window.

I left the car wash and drove to the grocery to pick up a bag of dog food. When I got home I spent an hour or so de-gunking the back window, wiping off other spots, and cleaning the windshield more carefully, as well as removing the bits of processed egg that had fallen from a hasty breakfast into the middle console of my van and lodged in the cap of the power outlet for my phone charger. (Don't ask). The car wash place dutifully wiped out the inside of the compartment with Armor All or whatever product they use, but thoughtfully left the petrified egg bits inside the cap. Double sigh. I went inside for a late lunch, took my drugs (4 hours late) and settled in for the mostly uneventful rest of the afternoon.

Other than exciting things like putting away dishes and making some travel arrangements to handle playing musical dorms with my kid's stuff, not much happened. So here I sit, at the end of just another boring day in not Paradise. I need to find something more interesting to keep me occupied. Either that, or find a website from which I can order a hot pool boy. At least if I got arrested for trafficking in pool boys it would be less dull around here.